Top 5 Tools for Automated Customer Service in 2024

In today's fast-paced world, businesses need to offer quick and efficient customer service to stay ahead of the competition. With technological advancements, automation has become a key aspect of customer service.

According to Forrester, almost 70% of customer service decision-makers are planning to increase their investment in automated customer service. This stat alone is big enough to show how big of an impact automation is having on customer service.

Automating customer service can not only save time but also improve the quality of service provided. In 2024, there are several tools available to offer automated customer service.

In this blog, we will discuss the top 5 tools that businesses can use to automate their customer service and enhance their customer experience. These tools are designed to streamline customer service operations and provide customers with a seamless experience.

But before we deep dive into these tools, let's have a look at what exactly automated customer service is?

What Is Automated Customer Service?

Automated customer service is a process that reduces or eliminates human involvement when responding to customer requests. 

Automated customer service is enabled by FAQ pages, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), email automation, chatbots, and automated workflows. 

Automated customer service platforms driven by artificial intelligence have immense potential to raise your customer service performance.

Why Is Customer Service Automation Important?

1. Reduce Customer Service Cost

According to a recent survey, the average cost of a live service interaction on the phone, email, or web chat is approximately $7 for a B2C company, while the live support cost for a B2B company increases to $13. 

Companies' investments in self-service or automation technologies have effectively removed simple, routine, repetitive tasks from live service queues. This has resulted in significant cost savings for the companies even as the overall customer experience improves.

2. Improve Omnichannel Customer Experience

Omni-channel customer experience is the foundation of good customer service. The customer interactions across all touchpoints should be consistent and excellent to enhance engagement and loyalty. 

Research has found that 90% of customers want omnichannel service with seamless communication across channels. Researchers have also discovered that companies with strong omnichannel engagement have experienced a 9.5% annual increase in revenue compared to a 3.4% yearly increase by companies with a weak omnichannel experience. 

Automated customer service helps improve the omnichannel experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

3. Increase Brand Loyalty And Referrals

Automated customer service enables you to build a one-to-one relationship with customers through seamless support across channels, devices, and platforms. This helps you create brand loyalty and increase referrals. 

An excellent customer service experience allows companies to get references and drive customer acquisitions. 

On experiencing an efficient customer service, customers are 38% more likely to recommend the company, while 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases.

4. Data-driven Personalized Services

An automated customer service platform collects consumer data across touchpoints and analyzes it to provide personalized support. The platform uses sentiment analysis to understand customer intent and emotions to drive the flow of conversation.

Top 5 Benefits Of Automated Customer Service Tools

Automating customer support requests simplifies tasks by optimizing processes and reducing the time to complete the tasks. 

Using automation tools has many advantages including cost reduction, fast issue resolution, short customer wait times, and personalized customer experience.

1. Cost Reduction

Automating routine and repetitive customer support activities helps the enterprise save costs. 

According to McKinsey, companies can save 20% to 40% in customer service costs and increase customer satisfaction by 20% by investing in customer experience technologies. 

2. Quick Query Responses

Automated customer service helps to shorten the response time to customer requests.  

According to research, 90% of customers rate an immediate response as essential or very important when they have customer service questions. 33% of the customers have mentioned being on hold as the most frustrating aspect of getting help.  

Rule-based chatbots help with simple customer queries and frequently asked questions.  AI chatbots help to resolve customer queries through a voice or text interface. 

Both these types of bots enable customers to get a quick response meeting their expectation of a quick answer in an emergency and resolving a complaint for using chatbots.

3. Reducing Customer Wait Time

Customer service automation reduces wait time for customers as bots handle routine queries while complex queries get transferred to agents. 

Automated customer service tools enable customers to use self-service options for common questions and instant responses. It also helps customers with complex queries get connected to agents faster. This is beneficial for customers, especially during peak times when call volumes are high.   

4. Personalized Customer Experience 24/7

Customer service automation through chatbots enables customers to get personalized service all throughout the year.

Chatbots can be configured in multiple languages, enabling customers to get support in their native language. 

The multilingual capabilities of chatbots help businesses create personalized experiences for their customers and enhance brand appeal to a broader customer base.

Chatbots serve customers round the clock throughout the year, leading to higher engagement and brand loyalty. 64% of customers have mentioned 24/7 service availability as one of the best chatbot features. 

The inbuilt systems in the chatbots help route the complex customer request to the human agent for resolution. 

The human agent picks up on the conversation in real time and gets a view of the bot's interaction with customers, so they don't have to repeat the requests. 

A unified customer experience across communication channels helps brands build long-lasting relationships with customers.

5. Process Optimization

Chatbots store data that helps assess the bots' performance and business benefits using customer service automation software. 

The customer conversation data can help improve the knowledge base and conversational agents' performance.

Top 5 Customer Service Automation Tools

With the availability of a wide variety of customer service automation platforms, it can be overwhelming to select the best platform for your business. 

Even as a no-code platform helps automate customer service with relative ease, many factors need to be considered to pick the right product. 

We have curated the list of the top 5 customer service automation tools best suited for mid-sized enterprise businesses.

1.   WotNot

WotNot’s customer support automation platform helps you with automating your customer service to improve customer engagement through conversational marketing. 

There are many factors for you to consider WotNot’s no-code bot builder to build chatbots for your customer support and demand generation.

1. WotNot's no-code platforms help even a non-technical person build a personalized chatbot that can be used across all online channels, including the website, mobile application, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and SMS. 

2. You can build a bot from ready-made templates as per your business's function and industry vertical. 

3. WotNot's easy-to-use interface also enables you to can also create a chatbot from scratch with utmost ease.

4. The platform can be integrated with internal systems like ticketing tools and feedback mechanisms. The chatbot analytics helps you assess the performance of the service chatbot with relevant metrics, such as hours and cost saved, and CSAT (Customer satisfaction scores).

Some critical functionalities of the WotNot automation platform are: 

1. FAQ Builder

The FAQ builder helps create a knowledge base of common queries, enabling customers to receive instant responses, and eliminating wait time. The bot offers 24/7 service throughout the year.

2. Human Handover

The bot transfers complex queries to human agents, now tasked to handle more value-added work. This leads to optimal utilization of agents leading to high productivity.

3. Multilingual Support

WotNot helps you create a multilingual bot to offer a personalized experience to customers in their native language.

4. Supports Ticket Management

WotNot bots will also help your customers raise tickets and check the status in real-time.

More than 3,000 customers have trusted the WotNot customer service automation platform across industry verticals. WotNot offers economically priced service packages suited for mid-sized enterprises. 

If you need assistance with the platform, opt for a done-for-you service, where a company-experienced team will help you develop your bot.

2. Ada

Ada ACX platforms feature an AI engine-powered chatbot that enables you to deliver personalized customer service. The platform allows companies from different industry verticals to customize their customers' experience using vertical and business segment-specific language and jargon.  

Ada offers a compelling customer service value proposition through automation, personalization, and speedy implementation. Ada can accurately process customer queries and deliver strong customer satisfaction scores. 

Ada chatbot equipped with advanced analytics helps analyze the bot's performance in terms of average handling time, abandon rate, and customer satisfaction metrics.

Some critical functionalities of the Ada automation platform are: 

1. Omnichannel Support

Ada offers services across all channels 24/7. Customers can access services throughout the year without extending customer support hours or adding new agents.

2. Agents' Productivity

Ada customer service chatbots attend to routine and repetitive queries and free up agents to attend to high-value queries as and when the chatbots transfer the queries.

3. Personalized Customer Experience

Ada's chatbots offer support in more than 100 languages tailored to each customer's preferences.

Even as the Ada platform offers rich features, its prices are high.

3. Intercom

Intercom is a customer service automation tool and messaging platform that enables businesses to communicate with their customers through websites, social media, and emails. 

Intercom helps you provide customer support and provide service delivery and digital experiences. The platform helps scale customer support to many users efficiently.

Some critical functionalities of the Intercom automation platform are: 

1. Self-service Support

The platform enables businesses to offer self-service support through chatbots and help articles resolve repetitive queries. 

A help article is an online document that provides answers to frequently asked questions and provides solutions to common problems faced by customers. This helps customers receive a quick response and reduces questions for the support team. 

The platform publishing tool enables you to publish helpful content quickly, and the personalization feature provides the correct information to the customers. It helps you program the support channel offered to customers based on query types.

2. Personalized Experience

Intercom integrates data from the entire technology stack to present an updated and unified view of the customers. This helps you find the proper context for engaging with customers. 

Personalization also enables you to prioritize your high-value customers so that they don't have long wait times.

3. Team Productivity Analysis

Intercom offers a collaborative inbox that provides consolidated information in one dashboard. 

The rules and automated workflows help improve team efficiency by reducing manual tasks. 

The reporting tool evaluates the team and business performance with metrics like median response time, conversation rating, etc.

Intercom offers a starter package for small businesses, priced at $67 per month. The package includes unlimited inbound conversations, and 1,000 people reach through outbound messaging every month. They provide a 14-day free trial for the starter package.

4. Freshdesk Freddy

Freshdesk support desk is an online cloud-based customer service software that offers comprehensive customer service automation solutions. The self-service module includes their chatbot Freddy, initially called ‘Answer Bot’. 

Freddy is an intelligent chatbot that helps answer customer queries from your knowledge base. 

Freshdesk's knowledge base supports 42 languages, enabling you to configure Freddy in those languages. 

The bot builder helps you build chatbots using the no-code GUI builder to create distinct automated customer responses unique to every use case in your business.

Some critical functionalities of the Freshdesk Freddy are:

1. Intent Detection

You can train the bot to gauge customer intent and provide follow-up answers accordingly.

2. API Connectors

You can integrate bots with other applications and tools to fetch or push information.

3. Reporting And Analytics

You can create customized reports using visualization features unique to your business.

Freshdesk Freddy solutions are available in three different packages.

• Freddy Self-service - The plan offers customer-facing AI capabilities with a chatbot builder with an easy-to-use, no-code GUI. This helps you implement bots- the first strategy for your customer service.

• Freddy Starter - The plan provides basic agent and customer-facing AI capabilities and enables you to experiment with AI-powered automation in your customer service.

• Freddy Ultimate - The plan offers advanced agent and customer-facing AI capabilities. This will help you move past the experimentation stage and automate customer service at scale.

5. Atlassian Halp

Halp is a modern, lightweight help desk from Atlassian that enables businesses to create and manage support requests directly in messaging applications Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Some critical functionalities of the Halp are:

1. Track

You can convert customer messages into tickets and streamline requests. This enables you to avoid context-switching and organize cluttered channels. You can use simple emojis to convert any message in Slack into a trackable ticket.

2. Automate

Automate responses by creating routing recipes and recommended answers. This helps you empower customers to self-resolve repetitive questions.

3. Reporting

Assesses the number of tickets created and resolved; measures CSAT and resolution times to highlight your team’s work. 

Halp offers three monthly packages classified as standard, premium, and enterprise based on the provided functionalities. The pricing is per-agent, with volume discounts offered when agents are added.

Bonus Tool: Hiver

Hiver is the world’s first customer service software built for companies that use Google Workspace. With Hiver, teams can deliver outstanding customer service without breaking a sweat, as the tool fits intuitively inside Gmail’s interface.

Using Hiver, teams can deliver support across multiple channels - such as email and live chat - without switching tabs or learning another software. 

Hiver allows you to assign, track, and collaborate on customer queries. On top of that, you can improve the efficiency of your support team by automating several workflows.

Some key functionalities of Hiver include:

1. Round Robin Assignment

Although Hiver allows managers and supervisors to delegate queries manually to agents, doing this at scale might be time-consuming. This is why Hiver offers auto-assignment functionality. 

With this feature, incoming queries are auto-assigned based on support agents’ availability, in a round-robin manner. With zero manual intervention, queries get assigned on time, making it easier to deliver timely support.

2. Rule-based Automation

Support queries can be routed to specific team members based on pre-defined rules and conditions. 

Such rule-based automation can also be leveraged to add tags to queries - this not only helps support agents streamline queries but allows them to prioritize and act on emails that need attention.

3. Harvey Bot - An AI Sidekick

Harvey is an intuitive AI bot that powers up Hiver with its Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities. Harvey identifies the sentiment behind customer conversations and ensures queries that don’t need any more attention from support agents are automatically closed/resolved.

Over 1500 customers - including the likes of Harvard University, HubSpot, Vacasa, Upwork, and Canva - use Hiver to deliver delightful customer experiences.

Conclusion

You will need to do a detailed assessment of your requirements and automation platforms to select the best-fit tool based on functionality, price, and support. Our automation experts can help you get started on your customer service automation journey. For that, you can schedule a demo with our experts.

To enhance your business through automated conversations, browse and discover more about the WotNot chatbots.

In case of any queries, feel free to reach out to us.